Seymour Lipton

Preliminary drawing for a sculpture

c. 1965

Seymour Lipton was an American abstract expressionist sculptor. He was a member of the New York School who gained widespread recognition in the 1950s. His early choices of medium changed from wood to lead and then to bronze, and he is best known for his work in metal. He made several technical innovations, including brazing nickel-silver rods onto sheets of Monel to create rust resistant forms. Through the medium of metal sculpture, Lipton endeavored to portray the inner complexities of the human psyche through shapes that enclose and oppose each other, interrelating convex and concave, solid and hollowed forms. Although his imagery was often based on visual stimuli, his expressive abstractions were never literal translations of the visible world. He altered and arranged shapes to create sculptures symbolizing intangible, universal concepts absorbed from sociology, psychology, and myth.